Leander Paes along with Andre Begemann lifted the Biella Challenger title
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A week ahead of Rio Olympics 2016, India’s evergreen tennis hero Leander Paes received a huge boost to his Olympic medal ambitions by winning the Thindown Challenger title on clay in Biella, Italy on Saturday. The Indo-German pair, seeded third, upset the top-seeded Slovakian-Chilean duo of Andrej Martin and Hans Podlipnik-Castillo, 6-4, 6-4. The summit clash lasted 1 hour 13 minutes.
This is Leander’s second Challenger title of the year after he and Sam Groth reigned supreme at the Busan Challenger on hardcourts back in May. Overall, this is the 19th victory at this level for the 18-time Grand Slam champion.
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In the final, Paes and Begemann broke their opponents twice, once in each set, that rewarded them the win. The top seeds did have a few opportunities of their own but the Indo-German duo saved all four break points to deny them any chance for a comeback.
Earlier on Friday, they had upset the second seeds James Cerretani and Philipp Oswald 6-3, 6-4 in the semi-finals.
This is Paes’ first title triumph since capturing the French Open mixed doubles title in early June that completed his Career Slam in that category. In between, he teamed up with Rohan Bopanna to guide India to a 4-1 win over South Korea in the Davis Cup Asia/Oceania Group I second round clash.
He will now head to the USA to play World Team Tennis before making his record seventh appearance at the Olympic Games.
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About the author
Sudeshna Banerjee
Sudeshna is a veteran Indian Sports and International Tennis journalist as well as editor at Sportskeeda. She has an overall experience of over 10 years with top publications like The Bridge, Fox Sports Asia, and gained a keen interest in Indian sports since the 2002 Commonwealth and Asian Games when she was in school.
Sudeshna holds a Master's degree in Journalism and Mass Communication. She attends tournaments regularly and being a highly experienced journalist, she ensures she only contacts the correct people from her network for the most authentic information to be put in her articles.
Sudeshna’s favorite Indian athlete is PV Sindhu owing to her big-tournament performances. She also admires Tennis legend Rafael Nadal for his resilience and has witnessed the Spaniard in action at the French Open, due to which, Roland Garros is her all-time favorite Grand Slam tournament.
Neeraj Chopra’s gold medal win at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics made a lasting impact on Sudeshna. She has also interviewed him along with Badminton star Chirag Shetty and several other sports personalities. She has done on-ground reporting on multiple ITF tournaments along with the Premier Badminton League, Asian Boxing Championships and the Davis Cup.
When not using her skills and years of experience in crafting compelling content, Sudeshna likes to read, watch movies and travel.
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